Month: January 2015

Pictures, Memories, and Lots of Fish: Diving in Koh Tao

Last October I completed a diving course with ScubaShack in Koh Tao, Thailand. The four-day course which was offered for a bargain price of 8,500 Baht certified me as a PADI licensed Open Water Diver and equipped me with a lovely little booklet in which to record the colorful fish I shall get to see in my future dives. The last day of the course was of course the highlight: two 18-meter dives in Chumphon Pinnacle and Hin Pee Wee. In anticipation of our first dive that morning, my friends Levent and Seda, and our instructor Claus boarded the dive boat at the unbearable hour of 05:45 am, thinking: “Why this Thai torture? Aren’t we on vacation?” ScubaShack is one of the earliest risers among tens of diving schools on the island famous for licensing the highest number of new divers. They torment their students with a 05:00 am wake-up call so that they may relish the wondrous magic of underwater Koh Tao, undisturbed by the hundreds of other divers who arrive at the very late hour …

How I Quit My Job to Travel and Write

I am about to embark on a cliché. Two days ago I handed in my resignation to the manager of the research institute where I have been working for almost five years in order to leave my settled life for that of a nomad. With no plane ticket purchased, nor a clear idea of where my round-the-world trip will commence, I declared that I am leaving, flying away to travel the world and write. “What can I do to change your mind?” my manager asked. My decision seemed impulsive to those around me and it was, considering that I woke up two days ago with not much more than the intention of eating breakfast and driving to work. Yet this has been something I have been fantasizing for many years: to leave my comfort zone in Tel Aviv where I have a home, friends, a job and journey into to the world alone. But all of that doesn’t matter. Each word that is written in this first blog entry is a testimony to the ordinary within …